MA Writing for Performance

Start date: September

Course length: full time: one year, part time: three years.  Students can achieve a Postgraduate Certificate with 60 credits, and a Postgraduate Diploma with 120 credits as standalone qualifications.

Campus: Kedleston Road site and Derby Theatre, Derby.

Faculty: Arts, Design and Technology

School: School of Humanities

This course is available to international students

This course is designed for students who wish to develop their writing skills in the field of live and recorded performance. Studio practice will be at the heart of the programme. Taking the premise of David Edgar that performance writing is both an art and a craft; the programme will divide from the start into both exploration of the students' own work and study of the contemporary and historical canon.

Combining both taught and individual research elements, the course offers you an individualist approach to writing, opportunities to explore personal interests and subjects, whilst offering a firm structure from which to experiment with dramatic form.

The programme has a strong emphasis on the relationship between theory and practice, and following a first semester of lecturer input, a flexible mode of study will develop to enable you to enhance your own learning experience. This may include, depending on your own academic interests,  traditional forms of theatre and influences and contemporary trends in staging and research, (verbatim, site specific, multi-media, community), approaches to writing for radio, the finding of the ‘voice’ for recorded performance, and writing for television.  The course will develop high levels of research skills and offer frequent opportunities for script development, collaboration and staging.

Postgraduate Certificate

• Performance Writing:  The Art Form
• Performance Writing:  The Craft

Postgraduate Diploma

• Workshop Practice
• Audiences and Markets

Masters

• Creative Project

Applications are welcomed from students with a good first degree in a relevant discipline or related disciplines to the MA. The usual minimum entry requirement is a 2.2 honours degree or equivalent. Evidence must be provided of comparable experience and research in your first degree.

All applicants must be able to demonstrate ability to research, to organise information and to write coherent and creative work. All candidates will usually be interviewed, ensuring that we offer the appropriate academic support for the candidate’s creative development. We may also require submission of a portfolio of creative writing.

For candidates whose first language is not English, we require students to have an IELTS standard of at least 7.0 or its equivalent.

We welcome and encourage applications from candidates who can be considered adequately prepared to succeed on the programme. Candidates with non-traditional qualifications may be able to gain entry onto the programme if they have the required communication and learning skills as well as the appropriate knowledge, experience and motivation to succeed.

UK/EU students

• £495 per module (you usually take 9 of these modules in total)

International students

• Full time: £10,760 (in total)

*These fees apply if you're starting this course between September 2013 and August 2014. We recommend you check fee details with us though, as they can change. Costs can increase each year.

Throughout the programme, the emphasis is on student centred learning as well as tutor input, so that all students will become independent learners and practitioners. This is a specialist course aimed at producing writers for performance, both live and recorded, and some unique teaching and learning features are:

• Studio based practice in a creative, workshop atmosphere.
• ‘Writer’s retreats’ intensive (block) study weeks.
• Full utilization of excellent facilities, fostering creative practice, teaching and learning with a range of peers and professionals.
• Within the Learning Theatre, space to work and learn from visiting professionals and to stage work and receive feedback.
• Class based lecture modules that will provide a framework for study supported by recommended reading and viewing.
• A studio environment or ‘writers space’ that facilitates and encourages rigorous creative enquiry.

A range of assessment types are utilised, including critical based essays, project proposals, reflective essays and extended research projects. Together these form components of the research process ad enable you to develop your research project to reflect your individual cultural and academic research interests.

Throughout the programme we use a mixture of formative and summative assessment. Formative assessments are preliminary works that are not graded, (e.g. a draft of a script), which will help you in the successful completion of the modules and the programme. Summative assessments are the formal assessments which form part of your final grade. You must complete these to gain the ‘right to be assessed’ in the summative assessments.

Although the focus on the programme is writing for performance, the course will equip you with a range of transferable skills. These included a range of writing skills and careers, e.g., playwriting, brochure writing and planning, marketing and publicity writing, teaching and motivational speaking.

With the emphasis on becoming a freelance writer and artist that is embedded onto the programme, the student will graduate with a skills set and the tools necessary to become employed in the creative and writing landscape. It will provide a grounding in research methodologies for students wishing to progress to MPhil/PhD level, for development in arts careers and broadcasting, and teaching.